The Club has purchased the licence for the World Class Track and Field Series of coaching videos. Over 14 hours of coaching instruction and demonstration from some of the USA's most successful coaches.

The Club is looking at taking a limited number of athletes to this year’s Gothenburg Youth Games between 29th June and 1st July with a view, if this year’s trip is a success, to having a much larger group attend the 2019 event.

This is a highly competitive and prestigious event held at the world famous Ullevi Stadium, where Jonathan Edwards set his still unbeaten World Triple Jump Record in 1995.

The event is open to all athletes born before 1st Jan 2007 and the Club is looking to send athletes that will be competitive in their chosen event(s) based on previous results at the Games. Competitive means being capable of finishing in the top 30/getting through qualifying. If an athlete is likely to finish in the top 20 then the Club will provide £100 of support towards the cost of the event for that athlete.

The full program of events can be found athttp://www.vuspel.se/pdf/VUinbj18eng.pdf. Entries will cost about £7 per event. The club will submit the entries on your behalf in April. There is a minimum standard for throws events which is listed on the pdf file. Some preliminary rounds of the long jump for younger athletes may be held outside the main arena.

For travel there are 2 options:

For athletes competing/qualifying on Fri 29th June: 1 stop flight from Edinburgh to Gothenburg on Thurs 28th June and non-stop flight back on Mon 2nd July (current best price c£185 return)

For athletes competing on either Sat 30th June or Sunday 1st July: non-stop flight from Edinburgh on Fri 29th June and non-stop flight back on Mon 2nd July (current best price c£125 return)

Obviously flight prices change daily so if you are selected for the event then you would be advised to book flights sooner rather than later. Hotel accommodation will be arranged once final numbers are known. The cost of bed and breakfast accommodation is likely to be around £50 per person per night.

If either you or your child is interested in competing at this prestigious event then please can you email Colin SpeirsThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.in the first instance, by Friday 16th March, with the following information:

Name

Age/year of birth

Chosen event(s)

PB and anticipated standard at time of the Games

Colin can also be contacted on 07957 423389.

Athletes 15 years and younger would need to be accompanied on the trip by a parent or responsible adult. Athletes aged 16 years and older will be expected to be self-sufficient during the trip but can expect help and guidance from the Club Coaches that are attending the event.

As always, we also require a number of Club Coaches to attend the Games to manage and support the Team. We require a ratio of 1 coach per 4 athletes under the age of 16. Any coach that is willing to help with managing the Team will receive £100 from the Club towards their costs of attending the Games. Please can you email Colin SpeirsThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you are interested in helping.

One of Victoria Park’s senior athletes and lead coach of our disability group, Becky Dunphy, who’s also coached by our Club President Graham Smith has been involved in a charity called the Dalitso Project for the last 11 years. This charity is a very small organisation, founded in her home town of Arbroath, and it works primarily with orphans in Malawi, central Africa.

The Dalitso project looks after more than 300 orphans in Malawi, many of whom have no living relatives and who would not be able to go to school without support. Most of the children are day-care which means that they come each day to the centre to receive food and lessons as well as clothes, school books, fees and soap. Some children however have either no living relatives, or come from home situations where they are not wanted or have not been treated well. These children live in supported residences with their adoptive parents at Thyolo and Kambilonjo.

When Becky visits the projects (each year) she stays at each of the residential homes and every morning (around 4.45am) for the last 5 or 6 years, when she gets up to do her training (as per Graham’s instructions), she has a band of training partners racing her wherever she goes! Which is always annoying when she’s struggling up a hillside at altitude and some wee kids come tearing alongside her!

For the last few years she’s been trying to put her coaching skills to good use and give these youngsters some running sessions to work on and some encouragement to keep working on their natural talent!

When the Victoria Park committee heard about Becky’s involvement with the Dalitso Project they were keen to offer support. Club Secretary Gordon Innes met with our sponsor Katie Alexander of Achilles Heel and they identified about 60 unsold club training tops which were a previous design. Katie was happy to assist and they passed the tops to Becky in August last year.

The Dalitso project send a container every year to Malawi with clothes, toys, books and medical equipment (amongst other things) and they aim to send the container at the end of September each year so that it will reach Malawi in time for Christmas (as the sponsors from their sponsor-a-child program all send Christmas presents each year). The 2017 container actually left in early September and should have arrived in plenty of time for Christmas, but unfortunately a terrible storm hit the port in Durban, South Africa whilst the container was docked there, and the container ended up stranded in the badly damaged port, until the port could be repaired. This delayed the container by about 6 weeks unfortunately and so it didn’t arrive in Malawi until the end of January.

Luckily for Becky, that meant that her visit in early February this year coincided with the unpacking of the container and the distributing of the many things that so many generous people in Scotland had donated. She was therefore able to train with a squad of athletes and give out the Victoria Park training tops! She assured us that they went down a treat! Suddenly everyone in the village wanted to join her training squad!

Becky thanked everyone at Victoria Park and Achilles Heel for the support and for helping an aspiring bunch of poor young athletes look so smart!